Our Last Day in the States

Well the title pretty much tells the tale, today we depart for England after a lunch with Washington past Rhodes scholars and a keynote address by the current Warden of Rhodes House Donald Markwell. We could not be more excited about any experience besides maybe our wedding but we didn't really get to hang out a ton before that happened to share in the anticipatory excitement so this is really awesome. I will be posting a longer bit in the future that will touch on some of what Katie posted yesterday but the past week has been an incredible opportunity in DC to meet all of our new friends. It has been an indescribable time to be presented with the magnitude of the gift of this scholarship and in many ways the responsibilities that are concurrently innate upon its distribution. We are the heirs of blessing, fortune, and opportunity and there is a path of responsibility that goes along with this scholarship leading into the future and we cannot wait to embark on this journey.

Capitol City- Matt Wertz. sike.

Wow.  The last 4 days have been incredible for Jordan and I.  We arrived to DC and finally had the chance to meet all 31 of the other Rhodes scholars.  Being a tag- along of sorts, I will admit I was pretty nervous to  meet all of the other Rhodies.  I felt like I was back at the 1st day of middle school, or awkwardly getting ready for my 1st day of sorority rush.  I was especially nervous because all of you know how quirky, random, weird comments come out of my mouth often, especially when I feel nervous... but when you are about to meet 31 of America's most brilliant people you can't have first impressions like that. Luckily, somehow I managed suppress saying anything like "You won the Rhodes scholarship huh? what a lucky time" or "Oh your from Kansas? Do you ever just feel like Dorothy?" and Jordan and I were blown away with how incredible his fellow class mates truly are.  Talk about the most intelligent, interesting, and genuine people. I have yet to have had a conversation that didn't leave me feeling challenged (in a great way) or enlightened by their presence. Each one of them has been so gracious to accept us as a couple and make me feel so welcome in this very prestigious group.  We cannot wait to start our life together in Oxford with all of these new found friends.

Besides being overly excited about all the potential friendships we have ahead of us, we have both been wowed by all the cool things we have seen while in DC.  One of our highlights was last night when we were able to go to the British embassy and meet the British ambassador, quite a lovely chap.   It was a great warm-up for living in the UK; there were lots of strange, bland food being passed around, enormous incredible art everywhere, beautiful botanical gardens in the back yard, and even a basset hound that greeted us promptly upon arrival.  Man, I cannot wait to cross the pond tomorrow.

After a adventure packed morning at the Capitol, Jordo and I sat and soaked up each others excitement at our last American lunch.  (Don't worry, we both ordered cheeseburgers and french fries which were served on red-white-and blue plates.. go america).  Jordan brought up a great point, it has been such a HUGE blessing for us to experience all of this together.  I think it would be difficult to hear second hand from Jordan all of the things he has been exposed to this weekend.  I just don't know that the same sense of excitement and passion would have been aroused in me.  We have both had the chance to listen to past Rhodes scholars who are doing truly remarkable things with what they have been given and both feel charged and compelled to do the same with our lives. More on that later..

Well.. peace out/ lllyas/see-ya/ ttyl and all other American ways to say goodbye.  I miss all of you a tremendous amount.

September: The Month of Thanksgiving

If you know very much about Katie and I you probably know that we both really enjoy the music of The Avett Brothers.  Their lyrical poetry somehow constantly speaks to our hearts and the way that they can put their thoughts, emotions, and challenges into song has never ceased to amaze me. Recently we were driving back from one of our favorite places in the world (Auburn Alabama, War Eagle!) and had just said farewell to many of our best friends, and we were listening to the song Pretty Girl from Chile. A line from the song made us both step back and evaluate ourselves and our lives. The lyric says, "I'd like to think that I'm a thankful man but it may not be true". This line got both of us to thinking about our own thankfulness. As we drove we both got very emotional (really Jordan got super emotional) thinking about our friends and our family and how wonderfully blessed we are to have such loving close relationships with these people. We realized that most of the time we do like to think of ourselves as being thankful but the truth is that often, we take much for granted and entitlement begins to rear its ugly head in our direction. We substitute thankfulness for a self-righteous feeling of somehow deserving the love of friends because of our own good friendship. However, in moments of reflection we are able to take in the full measure of the love that our friends and family show us and its  demonstration of the unfailing love and promise of Christ and there is true thanksgiving in our hearts.
We were especially challenged by these thoughts in hindsight of the entire wedding and summer months. Our families, friends, and some random strangers showed us the kind of love that leaves one speechless and we felt that their acts had not been reciprocated properly with our thankfulness. Katie wishes that we could have everyone that we love over for a pizza party to hang out and talk and show them how thankful we are because nothing means thank you more than pizza. However, we realize that this isn't possible. Instead our words are our only tool for showing our thanks, and we say Thank You. To our Mom's and Dad's, brothers and sister, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbors, 36, the orig 4, swim bros, all of the past present and future YL compounders, all our Auburn friends with tiger blood in their hearts, our friends from Roanoke and Franklin, Scott and Amanda Bowen, Meagan Gibson for all of her help with the wedding, Mary Fran for hitting the sweet tooth at the wedding, Moes (aka The Southwest Grill), our random friend John who let us use his truck to drive away in and Katie's mom for following him to his house to ask him to use it, and for everyone else who in every sort of way made that day unforgettable. A thousand thank you's to all.
One more short story and this post is done. Before we left Auburn we went to church with all of our friends at First Presbyterian Opelika one last time and afterward went to lunch at Moes (Go figure). After eating, we went outside and embraced one another saying our goodbyes in the parking lot. Before getting in the car to leave one of my closest friends gave me a letter to read. We got into the car and began driving off and Katie read me the letter. There was no real need to read the letter nor any necessary words to be spoken. We had somehow found the moment when we realized the beauty of the relationships that we share with our friends and family and how much we will miss them when we are 3000 miles away.
God has been so good to us and when we step back from the moment and truly take in all the beauty of this wonderful life we are only more assured of his grace and blessing in our lives.

If Genghis Khan, Why Can't I?

Welp, here is our Blog, The Bee's Knees. This is our first adventure into the inter-web diary posting network and we are still rookies at this so throw us a bone if it looks shabby. For years I resisted any temptation to create a blog for simple principles that were really quite silly. Most reasoning centered around my dislike for the abbreviation of web-log into blog, and for that matter my dislike for most all unnecessary abbreviations. However, in an effort to stay in touch with all of our incredible friends and family we have decided to create a blog to record and relate some of our experiences, travels, and adventures. We realize that we won't be able to call and e-mail with the amount of correspondence that we would like to maintain with our closest of friends, so we thought a blog would be a great avenue of communication. With that being said Here is our first Blog Post...

Trying to figure out a cool witty name to a blog is a really hard process. We had an ongoing list of blog names that we had been brainstorming since the wedding, however none of them seemed perfect.  Here is a top 5 list of our favorites (By the way, I like top 5 lists).

5. The Colonel's Buffet

4. To Each Their Own

3. Katie+Jordan=#1

2. Za Andersons

1. If Genghis Khan, Why Can't I?

The number one choice ended up being the Bee's Knees due to its rhyming sound and overall coolness. However, the Genghis Kahn name was awesome and was actually a slogan used by a guy who decided to play a game of golf across the entire region of Mongolia. He wrote a book about his trip hitting a golf ball across the whole area, I didn't read it but I liked the phrase. Anyway, The Bee's Knee's it is.

Today, Katie and I spent the entire day packing copious amounts of clothing into vacuum pack bags which were then stuffed into 4 large suitcases and 2 carry-on bags. We spent hours weighing ourselves then picking up the bags and subtracting the new weight then unpacking some clothes and repeating the weighings then repacking some items and repeating the weighings followed by repeating the unpack/pack. All in all the pack went well and we are ready to leave in the afternoon for Washington DC to see Benny (my brother), meet the other Rhodes Scholars, and eventually travel to England on Wednesday.